“They won’t deal with us,” Marco says, echoing my thoughts. “Not after what happened. Lorenzo’s made it look like we’re finished. Why would they back a losing side?”
“Because we’re not finished.” Sophia’s voice cuts through the doubt like a blade. She steps forward, placing her hands on the table, and I see the steel in her blue eyes. “And because my father had connections with the Castellanos. Connections Lorenzo doesn’t know about.”
Every man in the room stares at her. I feel my eyebrows rise. “What connections?”
“My father saved Ricardo Castellano’s life fifteen years ago.” Sophia’s gaze meets mine, steady and sure. “Ricardo was being set up by a rival family. My father found out and warned him, helped him escape an ambush. Ricardo swore a blood debt. He told my father that if he or his family ever needed anything, all they had to do was ask.”
The room falls silent. A blood debt in our world is sacred, binding. If what Sophia says is true, Ricardo Castellano is honor-bound to help us.
“How do you know this?” I ask, my voice softer than I intend.
“Father Miguel told me. The day before…” She swallows hard, grief flashing across her face. “Before Lorenzo killed him. He said my father made him promise to tell me about Ricardo if anything ever happened to him.”
I move around the table and take her hand, threading my fingers through hers.
She squeezes back, and I feel the tremor running through her.
She’s putting on a brave face, but Father Miguel’s death still haunts her.
“Then we go to Ricardo,” I decide. “Sophia and I will make the approach. The rest of you, I need you to reach out to anyone else who might be willing to stand against Lorenzo. Old contacts, people who owe us favors, anyone with a grudge. We need bodies and we need weapons.”
“What about the Volkovs?” Yuri asks. “They’ve been trying to expand into Lorenzo’s territory for years.”
I shake my head. “The Volkovs can’t be trusted. They’d just as soon kill us and take everything for themselves.”
“Then we won’t have enough men, even with the Castellanos,” Viktor says.
“A handful of determined men are worth more than a hundred mercenaries,” Sophia argues. “Lorenzo’s men are loyal to money. Ours will be loyal to a cause.”
Marco pushes off from the beam, his dark eyes studying Sophia with new respect. “She’s right. We hit fast, hit hard, and disappear before they can regroup. Guerrilla tactics.”
“Exactly.” I pull the map closer, pointing to several locations I’ve marked in red. “These are Lorenzo’s primary operations. Drug warehouses, money laundering fronts, weapons caches. We take them out one by one, bleed him dry.”
We spend the next two hours planning, arguing, and refining our strategy.
Sophia proves invaluable, her mind sharp and tactical.
She suggests approaches I wouldn’t have considered, points out weaknesses in Lorenzo’s operations that I’d overlooked.
More than once, I catch myself just watching her, marveling.
When the meeting finally breaks up, my men filtering out to their assigned tasks, Sophia and I are left alone in the warehouse.
The afternoon sun slants through the broken windows, casting long shadows across the concrete floor.
“You were incredible,” I tell her, pulling her into my arms. “The way you commanded their respect, the way you thought through every angle.”
She looks up at me, exhaustion heavy in her eyes. “I’m terrified,” she admits. “But I’m also angry. Lorenzo took my father from me. He took Father Miguel. He’s taken everything, and I want him to pay.”
“He will.” I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing across her cheekbones. “I promise you, he will.”
She rises on her toes and kisses me, and I taste the salt of tears dried before the meeting.
I hold her tighter, as if I could absorb her pain, undo everything that’s brought us to this moment.
But I can’t.
All I can do is move forward and make sure Lorenzo pays for every drop of blood he’s spilled.
